By nature I am high-strung and animated, but when frustration confronts me head-on, I degenerate into a demoniac.

Pat Conroy -- The Water is Wide

Nathan had always been high-strung, vivacious, talkative, agitated; since throughout the first five months they were together (and they were together constantly) she rarely saw him in the act of taking "the stuff," she made only the most belated connection between drugs and what she simply thought was his somewhat frenetic but ordinary behavior.

William Styron -- Sophie’s Choice

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Then, towards the end of the week, a sketchy note from my dad arrived (postmarked Newark, New Jersey) informing us in a high-strung scrawl that he was heading off to "start a new life" in an undisclosed location.

Donna Tartt -- The Goldfinch

Boo wasn’t crazy, he was high-strung at times.

Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird

Both father and son were stubborn and high-strung.

Jon Krakauer -- Into the Wild

He was a brisk, pudgy, high-strung person whose movements were swift and certain.

Joseph Heller -- Catch-22

I would tell her all kinds of stories I’d heard about horse farms, such as the fact that the really high-strung horses had TVs in their stalls.

Barbara Kingsolver -- The Bean Trees

Her health’s not too good, she’s high-strung to begin with.

Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood

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Johnny was high-strung anyway, a nervous wreck from getting belted every time he turned around and from hearing his parents fight all the time.

S.E. Hinton -- The Outsiders

For that matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and swollen throat and tongue.

Jack London -- The Call of the Wild

THE HAMILTONS WERE STRANGE, high-strung people, and some of them were tuned too high and they snapped.

John Steinbeck -- East of Eden

It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think.

Joseph Conrad -- Heart of Darkness

Rosemary had a vision of the desperate vigil that high-strung, badly organized man had probably kept.

F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Tender is the Night

You high-strung Bohemian can’t understand us.

Willa Cather -- O Pioneers!

Mrs. Pate, our teacher, was a little high-strung; outbursts made her nervous.

Sarah Dessen -- Someone Like You

A high-strung, self-serious young man from the upper crust of English-speaking Montreal society, he was a brilliant medical researcher who went on a big mountaineering expedition every two or three years but otherwise had little time for climbing.

Jon Krakauer -- Into Thin Air

When he lets his hands and face move like they want to and doesn’t try to hold them back, they flow and gesture in a way that’s real pretty to watch, but when he worries about them and tries to hold back he becomes a wild, jerky puppet doing a high-strung dance.

Ken Kesey -- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

It must not be thought that any one could have mistaken her for a nervous, sensitive, high-strung nature, east unduly upon a cold, calculating, and un-poetic world.

Theodore Dreiser -- Sister Carrie

Likely he’s skittish and high-strung.

Olive Ann Burns -- Cold Sassy Tree

She’s so high-strung Simon can almost feel her vibrating, like a stretched rope.

Margaret Atwood -- Alias Grace

Nelson described her as high-strung, overwrought.

Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy

Even his sense of humor was a sensitive, high-strung instrument, and I had learned to play it delicately.

Pat Conroy -- The Lords of Discipline

I watch her all the time doing things in measured sequence, skillfully, with seeming ease, unlike my former wives, who had a tendency to feel estranged from the objective world-a self-absorbed and high-strung bunch, with ties to the intelligence community.

Don DeLillo -- White Noise

The three women… Hazel, who was rather high-strung, to say the least, at the wheel.

Louis L’Amour -- The Broken Gun

Eyes flittered about the room on high-strung nerves.

Ted Dekker -- Red: The Heroic Rescue

They re pretty high-strung in there.

Ted Dekker -- White: The Great Pursuit

Suddenly the quietness split to a chorus of snappy, high-strung, strange barks.

Zane Grey -- The Man of the Forest

Yes, your twaddle has made me quite high-strung, And I now insist that you hold your tongue.

Paul sold Christmas wreaths to the parishioners each year, and his wife, Phyllis, was tall and high-strung.

Alice Sebold -- Lucky

Angus and Leora kept up a high-strung chatter, while Martin stalked beside them, silent, sulky, proud of being sulky.

Sinclair Lewis -- Arrowsmith

You’re high-strung, honey.

Thomas Wolfe -- Look Homeward, Angel

I really believe that a finely-organized, high-strung man would suffer twice and thrice as much as they from a like injury.

Jack London -- Sea Wolf

The former seemed to be merely the result of weariness on a naturally high-strung temperament; the latter, the result of strain, of inner maladjustment.

Henry Roth -- Call It Sleep

He accepted all that his high-strung companion offered him, and put them away in what he supposed to be a very safe place; but poor Babcock never afterwards recognized his gifts among the articles that Newman had in daily use.

Henry James -- The American

They are athletic, tall, lanky, thin, but have VERY hyper, high-strung personalities, which do not lend themselves to being the best ’family dogs’ On the other hand, the English Labs are very blocky, stocky, shorter in their build.

John Grogan -- Marley & Me

This is the advertising now most important to be developed; that of high-strung, contagious enthusiasm, growing from actual excellence: the question being not whether people shall be satisfied, but how much they shall be carried away with admiration, and infect others by their unexpected enjoyment of what they found.

Erik Larson -- The Devil in the White City

You know, this stuff is tricky, and I’m thinking I should have just stuck with the project …" Berman, an awkward, high-strung guy with gaze aversion, comes out from behind the table.

Ron Suskind -- A Hope in the Unseen

It’s just that we’re both high-strung, and this week— (His voice is curiously old.

F. Scott Fitzgerald -- This Side of Paradise

On May 23 he had seemed so uncharacteristically narcotized in starting-gate drills that a bystander had remarked, "You’d swear he was a dull-witted lead pony instead of the high-strung animal he is.